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May 08, 2006

Ubiquitous Sensors? You Have Seen Nothing Yet

Organizations, and that includes governments, are essentially in a competition.And in a competition one seeks to dominate.Domination involves maximizing one’s available resources along three areas of competitive advantage:

A human capital advantage

An information advantage

A tools advantage

Human capital advantage includes sharp leaders establishing superior strategy, enacting smarter policy, implementing sustainable processes, and focusing resources on relevant information and implementation of appropriate tools (e.g., technology).Information advantage involves having the right data at the right place at the right time.And, a tools advantage includes physical resources (e.g., wood, hammers and nails) and machines (e.g., a communication system, computers, etc.).

While human capital is the prime mover within these three areas of competitive advantage, each of them are dependent on the other.A lack of advantage in any category diminishes the advantage of the other (e.g., less information availability limits the advantage of human capital and tools.)So in practice, if one wants to empower existing human capital assets, one option is to improve the information advantage, another option is to improve the tools advantage, or better, both.

So why are information collection and technological innovation (tools) unstoppable?Because, competing entities are keenly focused on staying ahead of their adversaries.Therefore, without a doubt, our future holds more sensors, more information flows and more computer-guided observations.This is inevitable.This is the truth about the future.

As we witness our society racing ahead with surveillance-enabling sensors and platforms (tools) in the spirit of competitive advantage, this unstoppable momentum can easily drive one into an apathetic perspective when thinking about privacy and civil liberties, freedom of motion and anonymity.But I prefer to spend my energies thinking about what kinds of privacy-enhancements can be innovated into these next generation technologies.

The more innovators, designers and engineers engage the privacy community and spend time thinking about socially responsible technology, the better off this planet will be.And while this effort will be far from perfect, I still believe it is better than doing nothing.